Bush Speaking Softly on Democrats : Politics: The President avoids trying to blame the GOP’s opponents for the budget stalemate because he needs a united front for his Persian Gulf policy.

In late July, about a week before Congress began its summer recess, President Bush and Republican members of Congress decided at a breakfast meeting that for one more week Bush would take the political “high road,” particularly when discussing the budget deficit.

After a week, if the budget summit produced no tangible results, all bets were off. Bush would feel free to make partisan attacks, and in his political appearances would use the White House bully pulpit to blame the Democrats for the failure to agree on reducing the federal budget deficit.

But that plan was dynamited by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the massive deployment of American GIs. Nearly two months later, even though he faces the last, crucial weeks of the congressional election campaign, Bush is being forced to tread lightly.

The White House has shown an ever greater sensitivity toward partisan rhetoric that could divide the nation as Bush seeks a powerful display of national unity for his Persian Gulf policy.

“What George Bush would risk in becoming too zealous a partisan would be the unprecedented support he’s getting in Congress” for Operation Desert Shield, said Ross Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University in New Jersey and an expert on the presidency and its relations with Congress.

The President’s low-key approach was readily apparent this week on a Western political swing, when he campaigned for Rep. Hank Brown, who is seeking to represent Colorado in the U.S. Senate, and when he raised $4.4 million in California for Sen. Pete Wilson’s gubernatorial campaign and for the state Republican Party.

Demonstrating his moderated tenor in San Francisco, Bush left the Democrats alone and stressed Wilson’s “brand of environmental activism.” In that arena, the President said, the candidate “holds a position of conviction, not convenience.”

It was a far cry from the George Bush who by many accounts slashed and burned his way through much of the 1988 presidential campaign, hurling to crowds at political rallies the red meat of angry attacks and trying to link his opponent in the public mind with, for example, convicted killer Willie Horton.

“The sort of rhetoric available in 1988 is not really acceptable today,” a senior White House official said in explaining the difference in tone now.

The unresolved budget talks and the extremely uncertain situation in the Persian Gulf have had “a tempering influence” on the President’s political message, he said.

“You’re more aware of the need to keep things together, and so they tend to mute the partisan rhetoric.”

The decision about whether to stick with the more statesmanlike approach or to reactivate partisan attacks is complicated by mixed signals from the electorate. Voters in Massachusetts and Oklahoma have sent unmistakable signals of strong anti-incumbent sentiments, yet a crisis on the international scene generally tends to favor current officeholders.

For the time being, White House officials believe that they have little choice but to follow an approach to the Nov. 6 elections that leaves little room for sharp attacks on the Democrats, in exchange for cementing support behind the Persian Gulf deployment.

Indeed, said one, “it’s a very easy trade to not be able to slash and burn as much” in exchange for a supportive electorate.

But the swap has come at a price.

For example, the Democrats have scored points with the public in the budget battle in recent weeks. One Republican adviser lamented their success in presenting what he described as the image of a President thwarting a solution to the deficit problem “to bestow benefits on the rich” by insisting on a cut in the capital gains tax.

“It was sound-bite massacre,” said Mitch Daniels, a political adviser in the Ronald Reagan White House.

But the toned-down approach will last only so long, some at the White House say.

As Election Day nears and the President shifts his focus from well-heeled fund-raising dinners to more public rallies, it is likely that he will develop a tougher edge to his campaigning, one White House official said.

“That’s the way we’re going to go,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Some things are going to change as we move along. This will evolve and sharpen as we get closer to Nov. 6.”

The “wild card” Persian Gulf situation, however, has made it “very difficult to map out a seamless strategy” for Bush to follow in each of the weeks leading up to the election, the aide said. At this point, he and other White House insiders report, they have mapped out the days the President will travel--and to some extent the candidates for whom he will campaign. But the message he will deliver, beyond exhorting the voters to turn out for Republicans, remains up in the air.